Gospel Story Finder

Tehei Boniface (Catholic Church): “I experienced a unique moment organizing this event. Everyone contributed their stone and cement to build this project of faith. Let’s not forget that God is the true architect. That day, we were all lights in a world sometimes darkened by hate. What joy to see youth in our churches still strongly believing in our Lord Jesus Christ. The tents were sincere spaces of expression. As I passed through, I saw in the youth’s faces a simple and deep joy of being together. As for the concert . . . it was a true moment of praise. After weeks of preparation, seeing our youth on stage, engaged and joyful, was a huge blessing. Thank you, Lord, for this breath of unity.”

A first dive is usually a thrilling surprise. When you finally reach the new planet in your sea voyage, everything is a dull green. Where are the vivid colors? A diver learns that the rays of the sun don’t shine down to this planet brightly enough to bring out colors, but shining a light at this depth is like instant color.

In the spring of 1950, he began to worry more about an annoying hoarseness. Cancer was diagnosed, and he was operated on. Doctors removed all of one and part of the other vocal cord, which would leave him with a raspy voice.
Under total anesthesia after having been operated on, he was being wheeled back to his room. Still drugged, Spencer sensed his table stop by an elevator and heard the orderly, angry at something, profaning the Lord’s name. Half-conscious, he managed to say, “Please don’t say that. I love Him more than anything in this world.” The orderly answered softly, “I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry.”

That Kolwezi district conference in 2013 was memorable for all involved. The district president asked the Kinkondja brethren, to share their powerful testimonies in priesthood meeting and in the Sunday session of conference. They had arrived very tired and very early on Saturday morning. By the end of the conference, they—and all who heard their stories and their testimonies—left refreshed, fulfilled, and feeling God’s love in their hearts.

Cousins
Benjamin, Bryant, Katharine, and Andrew V.; Julia, Nathan, and David J.; Stephen, Callison, and Bensen J.; and Brigham and Brooklyn T. are all cousins. They gathered from their homes in Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, and Arizona for a family reunion. Together they went to the Mormon Battalion Visitors’ Center in California.

When Joseph Smith died, the walls of the Nauvoo Temple were less than halfway done, and soon it became apparent to President Brigham Young (1801–77) that the Saints would again be driven out. So he asked the Lord: “Should we stay here and finish the temple, knowing that we will have to abandon it almost as soon as it’s done, or should we go now?” The answer came clearly, “Stay” (see Brigham Young diary, Jan. 24, 1845, Church Archives; Ronald K. Esplin, “Fire in His Bones,” Ensign, Mar. 1993, 46). The ordinances of the endowment and of sealing were so important that the Saints needed to stay.

And so for the next year, they poured all they had into the temple. Toward the end, their homes were being burned around Nauvoo, and the Saints were preparing to go west just as they were finishing the temple. In December 1845, enough of the temple was completed that the Saints could dedicate part of it, give endowments to those who were worthy, and seal husbands and wives to each other.

Over the next few months, they worked around the clock to prepare everyone spiritually for the great trek west. To me it’s profound and sacred that I am sealed by that same power to my wife, children, parents, and generations who have gone before and generations yet unborn. That is what the Restoration has made possible.

In my service, I carry out work for charities and private individuals. In our service mission, we try to find projects that the missionaries themselves have an interest in and have skills in. My main assignment based in Oslo, is called Operation Wood (Operasjon Ved). It is a charity that goes back more than 50 years. Every year, Oslo municipality receives a certain amount of timber donated from Løvenskjold, which owns large forests around Oslo. Oslo municipality provides a place to work, and volunteers who come and cut, dry and split the wood. The volunteers mostly consist of some retired gentlemen and me.
From October to March, with the help of the Lions Club, we drive out to families or individuals that need help with heating during the winter. During this period, we deliver approximately 160,000 kilos of firewood.

A poet set to verse the sorrow of opportunities forever lost:
Around the corner I have a friend,
In this great city that has no end;
Yet days go by, and weeks rush on,
And before I know it, a year is gone,
And I never see my old friend’s face,
For Life is a swift and terrible race.
He knows I like him just as well
As in the days when I rang his bell
And he rang mine.
We were younger then,
And now we are busy, tired men:
Tired with playing a foolish game,
Tired with trying to make a name.
“To-morrow,” I say, “I will call on Jim,
Just to show that I’m thinking of him.”
But to-morrow comes—and to-morrow goes,
And the distance between us grows and grows.
Around the corner!—yet miles away …
“Here’s a telegram, sir,”
“Jim died to-day.”And that’s what we get, and deserve in the end:
Around the corner, a vanished friend.

You’d have to have been me that day, lying on my bunk bed, before you could feel how I wanted a dog. I’d sneaked into the house and was lying there for about an hour before Mother knew. She stood in my bedroom doorway for a minute or so before she came over and lay down beside me and asked, “What’s the matter, son?”

Sometimes you can say, “Oh, nothing,” when Mother asks that. And other times you can’t. This was one of those other times. It was as if she had her arms around me and was looking into my eyes with all her might. Only she was just lying there beside me, waiting.

So I told her all about how I’d got into a fight up at Barney’s, and Tom and Scott said if I couldn’t play fair I could just go home. So I went. Talking about it to my mom made me cry. So while I was at it I told her what the real trouble was. “All this wouldn’t have happened,” I bawled, “if I only had a dog.”

Mother didn’t ask me whether or not I’d really been playing fair and what a dog had to do with it. She just lay there very still and listened. So I said some more. I told her that I hated school and that nobody liked me. I asked her how she would like to be seven years old and dumb and ugly and awkward and have people laugh at her when she used big words. I said I didn’t fit in this world anyplace, and God must have sent me to the wrong planet. The more I talked the more things I thought of. It was as wild and wonderful as any of my stories about Joey, and I don’t know when I’ve enjoyed howling so loud and feeling so miserable. Finally, I blurted out something I hadn’t really meant to say. “Besides,” I yelled, “There’s no such thing as Joey!”

Mother’s eyes filled with tears, and I was so sorry. I stopped crying right off and said quickly, “Please don’t tell Daddy—he’d be just sick.” That was a lucky thing to say because it made Mother smile right through her tears. And it struck me that this was the time to ask about a dog.

“Mother,” I said, wiping my eyes, “I’ll do anything in all my life if you’ll only get me a dog. I’ll do housecleaning forever. I’ll practice my piano lesson night and day. I’ll never ask for any more candy. I’ll do anything!” I was trying hard not to cry again because my mom never gives us what we bawl for. “I need a dog to love,” I whispered, “and most of all I need a dog to love me back.”

Mother started to explain once more about dogs in the city, and when she got to where she says that Tom and Scott had both wanted dogs, my mind was jumping with words, and I hoped the right ones would come out. And they did. They were magic words that changed everything.

“Mother,” I said, “I’m Rulon. And I’m a different kind of boy.”

She stopped right in the middle of what she was saying, and this time she did put her arms around me and looked into my eyes with all her might. She looked for so long I could hardly breathe. Then she said quietly, “Rulon, we will get you a dog.”

We got him the next day at a pet shop—a brown and white Pomeranian puppy, round and furry, with great, dark eyes and a waggly tail. You should have seen Tom and Scott when we brought him home.

“Spoiled kid! How come Rulon gets a dog?” they said almost together.

Mother seemed baffled for an answer, so I tried the words that had worked once before.

“Because I’m a different kind of boy,” I answered.

Their mouths dropped open. And they just stood there staring at me and my pup. Then Scott said to Tom, “He can say that again.” And they both snickered. So I did say it again.

“I’m a different kind of boy,” I sang out, “and Joey is a different kind of dog. He’s really mine. All mine. But you can pet him. And maybe when you say three times, ‘There’s such a thing as Joey’ he will be your dog too.”

They weren’t snickering anymore. They were laughing a real laugh, and I laughed too all the while they were saying, “There’s such a thing as Joey. There’s such a thing as Joey. There’s such a thing as Joey.”

The Black Horse Based on an ancient Celtic adventure fairy tale. A poor, kingdomless prince befriends the black horse, which then saves the prince’s life by helping him perform impossible tasks set by the evil Sea King. Then the black horse asks the prince to slay it!Marianna Mayer6–10 years

As a young man I worked with a contractor building footings and foundations for new houses. In the summer heat it was hard work to prepare the ground for the form into which we poured the cement for the footing. There were no machines. We used a pick and a shovel. Building lasting foundations for buildings was hard work in those days.
It also required patience. After we poured the footing, we waited for it to cure. Much as we wanted to keep the jobs moving, we also waited after the pour of the foundation before we took away the forms.
And even more impressive to a novice builder was what seemed to be a tedious and time-consuming process to put metal bars carefully inside the forms to give the finished foundation strength.

Many non-Mormons who met Joseph were impressed. For example, Josiah Quincy, a Harvard graduate and soon-to-be mayor of Boston, visited Joseph Smith in Nauvoo. He said Joseph was a “phenomenon to be explained,” a man born to lead, “of commanding appearance … whom it seemed natural to obey.” He said that future textbooks might refer to Joseph Smith as exerting “powerful influence upon the destinies of his countrymen.”1

I once visited briefly with the great actress Audrey Hepburn while she was making the movie My Fair Lady. She spoke of the opening scene in the movie in which she depicted a modest, unpolished flower girl. Her face had been besmirched with charcoal to make her seem part of her surroundings. “But,” she said with a twinkle in her eye, “I was wearing my perfume. Inside I still knew I was a lady.” It doesn’t take expensive perfume to make a lady, but it does require cleanliness, modesty, self-respect, and pride in one’s appearance.

Both before and since my marriage, I have had more help through prayer, in matters small and great, mundane and dramatic, than I can possibly list. And yet, when faced with the most important decision of my life, I could feel no help from him—no answer, no assistance, not even any sense of his spirit.
I met Bob when I was a sophomore at Brigham Young University. Without him, I found myself lonely in a crowd of my good friends; but with him, I recognized differences in our life-styles that could lead to problems in marriage.
When Bob asked me to marry him, not trusting my own decision, I asked God to confirm it for me. “With all my soul I asked Him to give me a “burning feeling” (see D&C 9:8) in my heart if marrying Bob were right, or a “stupor of thought” (see D&C 9:9) if it were wrong; I experienced neither the burning feeling nor the stupor of thought. Wondering if my faith had been insufficient, I rephrased the question, asking if it was right to break off the engagement; again, I experienced neither burning nor stupor.
Twenty-one months after we had met, I married Bob in the Alberta Temple without receiving any recognizable assurance that doing so was right or that not doing so would be better. I made my own decision. Committing myself to a relationship with risks and without any guarantees except the promises we made to each other before the most important witnesses. That commitment and those promises were mine, and I know now that I needed to make them without commandment to do so.
I know now that I wanted God to take all the risk out of my marriage, and hoped that he would guarantee a good relationship with my husband. Instead, God required that I solve problems and make the commitment on my own. In the process of growing closer together, Bob and I have found adventure and sorrow, growth, identity, and a great joy. Most people need a positive answer that their choice of partner is right; I needed an answer of silence so I would grow in the ways I have mentioned. My situation is probably very rare. In most instances I’m certain it would be very unwise to enter into an eternal marriage covenant without the sustaining testimony of the Holy Spirit.

Of all the presidential families, none had a greater collection of pets than the family of President Theodore Roosevelt. His six children, ranging in age from four to seventeen, were true animal lovers.
Pets were kept everywhere. There were horses, cats, dogs, guinea pigs, rabbits, squirrels, birds, and raccoons. Twelve-year-old Kermit even kept a small kangaroo rat under his bed, but it was kept a secret. “Don’t worry your mother,” President Roosevelt cautioned his son. “That animal may be clean and harmless, but your mother would not sleep well knowing there was a rat in the house.”

Later in this visit, Elder Tune and President Kendall trained local Church leaders and buoyed up the Latter-day Saints at a devotional which focused on preparing the Saints for temple worship.
The people of Kiribati have long hoped for a temple on their land and look forward to the construction of the Tarawa Kiribati Temple, which was announced in 2020.
Young full-time missionary, Elder Baylor Johnsen, recalls the reaction of one of the members at the devotional. He said, “I stood up to address the gathering. When I started by explaining, ‘We are here to help you get to the temple’ a woman named Aribo began to cry tears of joy. As I saw the smiling faces of her and others, I felt the love of our Saviour for each of them. I left that island with the sure knowledge that God knows and loves all His children, even on the most remote islands of the sea.”

Following the earthquake there was a run on gasoline. The fuel trucks that could maneuver over broken roads traveled very slowly, resulting in three-hour waits for gasoline, if any was available at all. But the Lord provided for us in miraculous ways. For example, while evacuating sisters and elders to safety in Niigata on the other side of the island, we realized we had driven 18 hours on a single tank, with a gas gauge that always registered “full.” As we neared Niigata, the gas gauge immediately dropped to “empty.”

I don’t know if you receive them, but every week, every mail, I receive two or three or a dozen applications for charity, from all over the world saying: “Please send us money to help these poor people that are starving and homeless.” Now then our work should go to our own people first, of course, and I have recently made up my mind. I just throw them into a pile and think, “Well, there is another $5.00 that could go to the fast offerings.” I think we should be very generous and give, instead of the amount we saved by our two meals of fasting, perhaps much, much more—ten times more where we are in a position to do it. I know there are some who couldn’t.

I know that the Book of Mormon is true because the Holy Ghost spoke to me. I was excited to tell my mom. She hugged me tightly, and I was very happy.
Matias M., age 10, Cundinamarca, Colombia

I can see only 10 percent of what is around me—mostly objects that are big and that move slowly. But that changed for a few moments one afternoon.
No one seemed to be around as I sat on a shady hill. The grass beneath me covered the earth like a green carpet, and I savored the smell of nearby roses. I knelt to touch each flower, thankful that I could see a small part of God’s lovely world.
Suddenly, I sensed movement close to me. Then I heard a chirp about a foot away. It must be a bird, I thought, wishing I could see it. I had never seen a real bird, just pictures of them in books. But I never would: they were so small, and they flew so swiftly.
My pulse quickened as I caught a glimpse of something brown. I strained my eyes until I could tell that the object was a bird. I stared in awe as the bird spread his wings majestically before me. I held my breath, not wanting to scare him away.
He lingered only briefly. As he disappeared into the blue sky, I wept freely. I had seen something so exquisite that I wanted to see more.
But soon another thought passed through my mind. If I could fully see, I might not value every priceless image as I now did. I might not see inner beauty as easily, nor have the compassion I had learned from my own suffering. It was God’s gentle reminder of his will for me. I could serve him best as I was.
I dried my eyes. “Thank you, Lord,” I prayed, “for letting me see a bird.”